Metformin Works Better in African Americans

The type 2 diabetes medication metformin, which is usually the first prescription a person receives at diagnosis, seems to work better in African Americans than in whites. In a study of electronic health records of 19,672 people with type 2 diabetes, starting on metformin led to a 0.90 percentage-point drop in A1C—a measure of blood glucose control for the past two to three months—in black participants versus just 0.42 in whites. The researchers took factors such as age, sex, body mass index, and starting A1C into account, so the difference more likely has to do with genetics, they say. Source:The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, published online June 12, 2014